“GRANT US WISDOM, GRANT US COURAGE” Episcopalians sing every week, as I’m sure many of you do, but most of us aren’t listening to the words. Their familiarity has bred if not contempt at least complacence. Maybe that helps explain why so many so-called Christians can so ignore – so endorse – what’s happening at the top of our ...

IT’S ABOUT TIME It’s an old 700 series Rolex watch – stainless steel with a small military-style black face, hands and numbers that once glowed in the dark, a simple stainless steel band and a small brass rivet for a fastener – nothing special by Rolex standards. It’s the most special watch in the world to me. On one side of the band, ...

“WHAT TRUMP COULD HAVE SAID” After Trump’s narcissistic impolitic/political rant/speech at the Boy Scout National Jamboree, I didn’t know what to say. But when my daughter sent me an opinion piece from LNP, her paper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I realized it had already been said. “In a time when our politics divides us, the Scout Law ...

DNA IN THE TIMBERS, SOUL IN THE PLACE We drive by them at the edge of fields, just there in the woods, or just here abandoned at the edge of progress, beneath the tumble of vines and what remains of a roof or a wall, the dark eyes of broken windows and missing doors, the lost welcome of sagging porches, of warmth gone cold from crumbling chimneys, reminders of a life and ...

GOOD WHISKEY ISN’T DRUNK. IT’S REMEMBERED. Good whiskey and good stories age well. I wrote that a while back when I was hired to write a bit about whiskey. I thought about all of that on the porch looking at the night over a bit of whiskey with the dog. I was drinking whiskey; the dog was just looking at the night. We both liked the moment. Whiskey is ...